Which Images Represent India?
By Guest Contributor Gwen, originally published at Sociological Images
On her blog, Deepa D. posted about what she calls the “Slumdog Shooting technique,” using this video from Greenpeace about climate change:
Deepa says,
Ishan Tankha, photographer…sitting in casually imperial isolation on one of the many historical monuments peppering Delhi…
Meanwhile every other shot? The gaudy, public, and exotically poor street life of Delhi. At most we get some middle class women shopping, some Metro commuters, and Ishan riding his bike in front of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
But even as he is saying climate change spans all classes, there are no other young, upper class people like him, no rich people, no half-naked out of fashion rather than poverty women, no fat cat industrialists or cavalcade-riding politicians, no indication that there are any of the Westernised English speaking people on the streets, even though Ishan has been chosen spokesperson.
I’m calling this the Slumdog Shooting technique – use English because you don’t want to alienate your Western audience with subtitles, but keep the local colour full of attractive yet needy children, crowds that look struggling, and picturesque poverty.
Also check out our posts on “starving African kids,” juxtaposing wealth and poverty, the white woman’s burden, the “we are all African” campaign, making charity recipients look gross, tourism in Brazil, us and them, Burger King’s Whopper Virgin campaign, India needs western technology, and de-racializing the modern/traditional binary.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Deaf Indian Muslim Anarchist wrote:
Yeah, not this bullshit again. People often complain about how Bollywood never represents poor people/lower caste Indians while Bollywood happily over-indulges in luxury porn with white-skinned (or light skinned) “Indian” women and men who live overseas and live in huge mansions. Which does NOT represent the majority of India.
It’s true, India has a very diverse society– poor, lower caste Indians as opposed to upper caste, filthy rich Indians. And then there’s the middle class Indians who are neither rich or poor. I have many relatives who are born and raised in India (and still live there). They are middle class, educated Muslims with modest incomes.
For once, this commercial is nice but it’s problematic because it ignores middle class Indians who happen to exist, too.
Posted 30 Nov 2009 at 12:11 pm ¶
TN wrote:
It seems as though, middle class poc are generally very under-represented. Being middle class will *gasp* make us appear normal… and we all know that the universe will implode into itself if we are seen as normal! PoC can only be so so lazy that they are poor and have no money or so so selfish that they are stinking rich but have no heart to help anyone else… imagine… MIDDLE CLASS PEOPLE OF COLOR… how revolutionary!!! (please note that is this sarcasm as I myself am one of these supposedly non-existent middle class poc)
Posted 30 Nov 2009 at 11:07 pm ¶
koji wrote:
She has a point. The further oddity here is that while the poor (and everybody else) will suffer most (as they can’t afford to spend their way out of problems) it is the rich and increasingly the middle classes that are causing the problems: the consumers of energy and manufactured goods. If the message is that it is *you* that is going to suffer (as well as everybody else) then showing the poor is totally irrelevant. You should be showing a nice apartment somewhere with no water in the taps, impossibly dusty air – well my ideas run out here, but the video isn’t supporting the message at all.
Posted 01 Dec 2009 at 1:38 am ¶
luckyfatima wrote:
I did see a bried clip of some middle class women, and the “company men” taking the trains. But…The Westernized audience will say that only poor India is “real” India. Like Dubai and Singapore are not “real” or “authentic” places…they need exotic looking poor people to mark a place of PoC as real. It would be too boring to show all facets of India, like a group of upper middle class girlfriends eating dim sum, or some middle aged people wearing track suits and Western branded sneakers and walking for exercise in a park…anyway, when Westerners do see these Indians, they immediately blame the middle classes and elites for the condition in the poor in India and are unable to see white supremacy’s global hedgemony on the world as a main factor perpetuating poverty and causing big gaps between haves and have-nots in places like India, because India’s poor are only India’s problem.
Posted 01 Dec 2009 at 3:18 am ¶
luckyfatima wrote:
oops in the first sentence it should say Western audience, not Westernized audience.
Posted 01 Dec 2009 at 3:19 am ¶
Sharlayo wrote:
@TN so true about the middle class might make the people seems “normal”. I would like to expand on that point. Not only will showing the middle class of India (African coutnries, Asian countries, etc) seem as you said “normal” but as “normal” we mean… uh oh…. like us! We will have to see OUR WESTERNIZED SELVES. And if they have middle class and a lower class then… oh my goodness- we must have poverty too! We are not exempt and *fuck* if we see ourselves in someone else (no matter where they are) then we might just have to do something.
Yes, the stero-type is lazy no good PoC but who is actually the lazy ones? The peopel who won’t even LOOK at others and see the stark similarities of themselves (by god, we are all human!) and therefore would have to get off their Ikea couch and do something, or at least care.
Very enlightening article.
Posted 01 Dec 2009 at 9:49 am ¶
Diana wrote:
How to make western audiences donate to your NGO 101. All of the comments above, and many of the ones I read from the links were very on point about the unexceptional methods employed by conservation/social welfare NGO’s the world over. The reality that all these organizations present is that environmental conservation and social programs that aim to produce band-aid solutions to social issues are directly linked to the colonialism that produced the issues in the first place. Just talking about how these organizations create their advertisements is one thing and it does continue to feed the same colonialist bullshit mindset for westerners, but to critique their intentions and global effect would take this conversation to the necessary next step.
Did you all know that both the World Wildlife foundation and the African wildlife foundation were both built by wealthy white men “who were convinced that whites had to act or the Africans would destroy the game” that they wanted to hunt themselves (At the Hand of Man, Peril and hope for Africa’s Wildlife by Raymond Bonner). And to this day these two organizations use their money and power to implement western conservational methods, that are shaped by the civilized/uncivilized lense, within the continent of Africa.
Posted 06 Dec 2009 at 4:47 am ¶
A.H. wrote:
Indians always object to what they feel is negative Western portrayal. But this is what Delhi is like.
Yes Indian middle class and yuppies exist, and much progress has been made, but the amount of poverty and human misery there is staggering.
Indian poverty may be somewhat fetishized these days but I feel that complaining about its (over)representation in popular media also does poor people a disservice.
Posted 06 Dec 2009 at 1:54 pm ¶